The Staffordshire private takes an honoured place among the wearers of the Cross for Valour, for his courage in turning to the rescue of his drowning comrade stamps him a true hero.
CHAPTER XXI.
ZULULAND.—HOW THEY HELD THE POST AT RORKE’S DRIFT.
The story of Rorke’s Drift is the story of one of the most heroic defences in our military annals. At this small post on the Buffalo River one hundred and thirty-nine men of the 24th (South Wales Borderers) Regiment, Durnford’s Horse, and the Natal Mounted Police, kept off a huge army of three thousand Zulus all through the afternoon and night following the disaster at Isandhlana.
Modern history, I believe, contains no parallel to this brilliant feat of arms, which stands for all time as an example of the splendid courage and devotion of which Englishmen are capable when duty calls.
At three o’clock in the afternoon of that fateful January 22nd an officer of the Royal Engineers was down at the drift watching the working of some pontoons. This was Lieutenant John Rouse Merriott Chard, now on active service for the first time after seven years spent at various dockyard stations. He had reason enough to be thoughtful, as he paced slowly along the bank, for the drift was a position of extreme importance. At this spot, where the river was most easily fordable, the Zulus might be expected to cross if they attempted the invasion of Natal. And to stay them if they came was only a small garrison of less than a hundred and fifty men.
The post itself was about a quarter of a mile distant, an old Swedish mission-station converted into a commissariat depôt and hospital for the use of Lord Chelmsford’s force. From where he stood Lieutenant Chard could see the two low buildings of which it consisted, with a small cluster of trees in front and at one side, and behind the white tents where the soldiers were. It looked a poor means of defence indeed.
From the mission-station his thoughts wandered to the little force which had crossed by that same ford eleven days previously and disappeared into the Zulu country. What had been happening behind those distant hills? He was not to be left long in doubt. Suddenly two horsemen appeared in sight on the other side of the river, spurring furiously towards the ford. As they dashed up, the pontoon was pulled across and the two were ferried over to the Natal bank.
The new-comers were Lieutenant Adendorff, of Lonsdale’s corps, and a carabineer who had escaped with him from the Zulus. The lieutenant was in his shirt-sleeves and hatless, his only weapon being a revolver strapped round his breast. As soon as he reached Chard’s side he poured out his breathless tale of horror, the tale of the Isandhlana massacre. He himself had come straight from the camp of death to tell the news of the disaster and to warn the little garrison at the drift that a large body of Zulus was advancing upon it.